Song Analysis: Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons

I recently got into the band Mumford & Sons. A friend introduced me to their song Awake My Soul and I loved their sound and their edge. I thought they were Irish at first, but I found out later that they're British. Then I watched them perform The Cave at the Grammy's and I bought the album a few days later. I love the whole album and I've been listening to it for weeks. I learned that Marcus Mumford wrote most of the songs for the album Sigh No More which makes it that much better. I love all the lyrics to their songs, but my sister and I have been talking a little about Little Lion Man and what it might mean. We both have different ideas and either could work as adequate interpretations (as I said last time, the cool thing about analyzing literature is that there can be more than one right interpretation). I'm going to write my humble opinion, but first here are the lyrics to the song:

Weep for yourself, my man,

You'll never be what is in your heart

Weep Little Lion Man,

You're not as brave as you were at the start

Rate yourself and rake yourself,

Take all the courage you have left

Wasted on fixing all the problems 

That you made in your own head

But it was not your fault but mine

And it was your heart on the line

I really f***** it up this time

Didn't I, my dear?

Didn't I, my...

Tremble for yourself, my man,

You know that you have seen this all before

Tremble Little Lion Man,

You'll never settle any of your scores

Your grace is wasted in your face,

Your boldness stands alone among the wreck

Now learn from your mother or else spend your days Biting your own neck

But it was not your fault but mine

And it was your heart on the line

I really f***** it up this time

Didn't I, my dear? 

Didn't I, my dear?

But it was not your fault but mine

And it was your heart on the line

I really f***** it up this time

Didn't I, my dear? 

Didn't I, my dear?

(Source)

The language of the song is fairly straightforward, so what I want to address first is the narrator of the song. The way I see it, the narrator of this song is a distraught father speaking to his hot-headed, cowardly son. Some other people I've talked to think the verses of the song are spoken by a person who has been cast off by the person who they were in a relationship with and the chorus is spoken by the person who did the hurting. This point of view could also work, but for this post I'm operating under the assumption that whole song is being sung by a father.

* * * 

The first verse starts off with the father sneering at his son, accusing him of being a dreamer and never being able to live up to the aspirations he has in his heart. Mumford rasps the words 'little lion man' like a heinous insult, and I believe it is meant to be. What is a little lion man? I think the father is calling his son a man who is loud and proud like a lion, but who has the heart of a little, scared child. The son has turned into an introspective parasite who lives in the fantasy world he's made up in his head. He is a coward who, the father claims, will never amount to anything. One phrase I find particularly interesting is 'rate yourself and rake yourself.' I may be incorrect in my interpretation, but I think the father is telling his son to rate himself because the son will find out that he lacks everything in character and will fall to pieces and thus have to rake up the shards of his broken personality. 

The words of condemnation the father has for his son are harsh, to say the least. But the sentiments that the father reserves for himself are even more acerbic. After all the insults he hurls at his son, the father goes straight into the chorus casting the blame on himself for the shambles his son's life has become. By the tone that Mumford uses in the chorus, it is clear that the father deeply regrets his decision to leave his son, to set a bad example, or whatever it is he did. Normally, I'm not exactly gung-ho for songs that throw around cuss worlds just for the shock value of it, but in this song I feel it is entirely appropriate. Maybe the father is having a conversation with his son for the first time in years. Given what we know of the son, he is probably skeptical and unwilling to hear what his dad has to say. Perhaps the father uses harsh language--something common to the younger generation--as a way to sort of put them both on the same level so that the son will be more inclined to listen.

We learn a little bit more about the son in the second verse. We learn that he is smart ('you know that you have seen this all before.'); perhaps he is the genius type who makes everyone think he is unintelligent. We also learn that he is a gambler (whether he gambles money or time or something else is unspecified) who expects grace from a world that will give him none. The father tells his son that his boldness will never be enough to survive in the world where he has destroyed his life. The line 'learn from your mother or else spend your days biting your own neck' seems to imply that the boy has grown up with his mom and away from his father. In my opinion, the father is telling his son to look to his mother for the right way to live or he'll spend the rest of his life beating himself up for all the wrong things he did. 

The chorus repeats and then Mumford vocalizes for a little while and the song ends. This song is very sad to me because of all the unresolved regret the father possesses. The song itself is in a minor key and the instrumentation is both heavy--to symbolize the anger the father has for his son and himself--and whimsical--to represent the grief and shame the father begrudges himself. Mumford does an excellent job, not only in Little Lion Man, but in many other of their songs, of expressing the mood of a song with the instrumentation. 

I know this isn't as long as the last one I did; the Spektor song had a lot more poetic jargon to wade through. I hope you enjoyed reading this and I encourage you to comment with your own thoughts and interpretations. I would love to hear what you think! Thanks for reading :)

Cheers!